


The Cat's a Dang Matchmaker, I Swear

by grassandcitrus



Category: Legion of Super-Heroes (Comics)
Genre: AU, First Meeting, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 05:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2417273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassandcitrus/pseuds/grassandcitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kitten manages to make its way into Querl's lab, and in his attempt to pacify the thing he meets her owner - who seems to take to Querl like the kitten does to Querl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cat's a Dang Matchmaker, I Swear

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh why did I do this? I dunno, I felt like it? I saw one of those au list posts on tumblr and was like "haha I wanna write Lyle/Brainy with one of these oh no here we go" so yeah. Here we are. Thought there wasn't any harm in posting it, even though it's a little fluff piece. It's not really set in any one continuity, either, so, uh. Yeah. 
> 
> If you want to talk to me about Lyle/Brainy or losh in general, feel free to contact me at my tumblr (url is lylenorg whoops) bc I'm lonely and want to talk to people about this dumb comic.

These experiments were, of course, time sensitive. Which likely explains why, during a crucial part of the process, Querl found one small mammal making mewling noises by his feet. It didn’t take much effort at all to ignore it, or really any at all, but the fact remained that if the thing stuck around for too long it could become a nuisance. All of these thoughts were instantaneous, and as such his experiment wasn’t really interrupted at all, and was able to be completed to at least some satisfaction.

Only after he started to rearrange the things sitting on the counter, rearranging some of the clutter of the past experiments, did he remember the animal and think to figure out where it was and make sure it wasn’t messing with anything that it could do damage to. It wasn’t hard to find, since the small thing was nestled in one of his jackets, tossed haphazardly off to the side. The small creature was a kitten, not newborn but certainly not old, about two months old. And it was shedding all over his jacket.

Thinking better of trying to save the jacket or move the animal - female, he noted - he went back to making some calculations and wondering over the long silence from the rest of the team. Usually one of them would have barged in by now and told him to do something by now, and he would have ignored it until it became relevant to him. Except that hadn’t happened yet, which left Querl to his own devices. It would have, at least, if the animal hadn’t decided that it - she - needed attention and started mewling at his feet again. Looking the cat over he realized that she was hungry, and that she certainly hadn’t eaten anything in the time that she had been in the lab. Which was easy feat for Querl - not so much for the cat. Looking back to his research he decided it was as good a time as any to go look for food, and in one motion reached over and scooped up the cat. The cat didn’t protest at all at being picked up, and instead started purring.

Querl absently petted the cat as he walked out of his lab, heading toward the Legion’s cafeteria. He knew they wouldn’t have cat food, but he could possibly find something for the animal, and at the very least he could grab something for himself.

He had almost forgotten about the cat until he walked into the room and grabbed the attention of the few legionnaires gathered in the room in the mid afternoon. Phantom Girl and Saturn Girl both gravitated over to him quickly while he was grabbing something quick to eat for himself, already having decided that there wasn’t likely to be anything for the cat.

“Please, Brainy, please tell me you aren’t experimenting on that kitten,” Phantom Girl asked while biting her lip and looking down at the cat, who had curled into the curve of Querl’s arm. He could have rolled his eyes at her - over the question and the name - but decided against it.

“If I were experimenting on her I wouldn’t have carried her out of the lab,” Querl responded, adjusting the kitten slightly in his arms. Saturn Girl’s eyebrows raised.

“That still begs the question of why you have a kitten,” she said.

“She somehow got into my lab - something I’ll need to look into when I have the time - and started making a racket. I thought if I fed it then it would stop,” Querl responded, edging towards the door.

“Wait, has she been in there long?” Saturn Girl asked at the same moment Phantom Girl asked “Instead of just kicking her out of the lab?”

Querl made a face at both of them. Almost as if to save him from further conversation the kitten started mewing at him again. “I need to get her some food,” he said as he walked out the door, as explanation for him leaving the room. Not that he needed to explain himself, he had just found that it went over better when he didn’t just walk away from a conversation.

He found himself leaving Legion headquarters, going over in his head where he could find cat food. Querl couldn’t have been walking for more than 10 minutes when he heard someone’s exclamation and the rush of someone moving towards him.

“Ah, sir you found my- oh wait, you’re not much older than me, are you?” said the boy running towards him. Brown hair and eyes, pale skin, human and most likely of Earth, Querl noticed as the boy approached him.

“Probably not,” Querl responded judiciously, “but that’s not the point of you talking to me, is it? What have I found?”

“Kitten, you found my kitten. Well, not really mine, but I’ve been taking care of her for a little while and -”

“Good job of that you seem to have done so far,” Querl cut him off, stopping what he could tell was about to be rambling.

“Well, she has a knack for getting herself places that she shouldn’t be - and getting away from places that she doesn’t want to be. She seems to like you, though, which is new. She doesn’t usually take well to strangers,” the boy responded, looking at where she was still nestled into the crook of Querl’s arm.

“She found a way into my lab. And laid on my jacket. Now she’s hungry,” Querl commented. The other boy raised his eyebrow, seemingly amused.

“Sorry about that?” he said, more a question than an answer. “I have food at home though, so you don’t have to go get food - I imagine that’s what you were going to do, at least.”

“Yes, I was,” Querl responded, shifting the cat in an attempt to give her back to her owner. The cat, however, decided that was not a thing she wanted to do, and stuck her claws tight to Querl’s shirt.

“She really likes you, then,” the boy said with a laugh, sweet and pleasant - not something that Querl generally found himself paying attention to with people. “If you want you can come back to my house with me. She’ll let go of you quickly when she smells her food.”

Querl looked him over again, decided that he wasn’t a threat - not one he couldn’t handle, at least - and responded “I could do that.” The other boy smiled at him widely, and Querl suddenly realized that he was attractive, something that he hadn’t noticed upon first seeing him. He filed that away in his brain as he followed him to the house with that cat food.

There was silence for a moment, but it was soon broken by, “Lyle. Lyle Norg, by the way.”

“Hmm. Nice to know,” he said, looking over to the brown haired boy. Lyle looked at him expectantly.

“And your name is?”

Querl looked over at Lyle quickly, and knew that he was putting on an act.

“You know who I am,” Querl said dismissively.

“Egotistical, huh?’ Lyle asked, jokingly, as if they were friends.

“It’s not that. Your body language tells me that you know who I am,” Querl responded.

“Well, maybe I was letting you introduce yourself to me, instead of letting the holovids do it for you. I don’t really know you but I thought you might appreciate it,” Lyle told him.

Now that he thought about it, his gesture was appreciated - even if Lyle did know who he was.

“Fine. Brainiac 5,” Querl told him.

“Brainiac 5 is a bit much, don’t you think? You have a nickname?” Lyle asked, leading Querl into a neighborhood.

“Brainiac 5 is sufficient,” Querl responded stiffly.

“Hmm. Your teammates refer to you as something silly, don’t they?”

Querl was mildly annoyed - Lyle had managed to assume as much from what? His reluctance to give him a nickname to refer to him as? Or just assumed because Querl was the type of person people enjoyed picking on with that sort of thing?

Instead of asking him how he knew, he simply said, “Brainy”

“Hey, that’s not that bad,” Lyle told him, but the smile on his face told Querl all he needed to know about that sentiment.

“It is childish and mocking,” Querl responded, not looking at his face.

“Are you sure they’re mocking you?”

“Definitely,” Querl responded as they neared what looked to be Lyle’s house. Querl knew that it wasn’t always a mocking name, but it was used mockingly enough for him to count it as such.

“Well, then, I suppose Brainiac 5 would work if that’s really what you want to be called,” Lyle told him, moving to unlock the door. Querl thought this comment over for a moment, then decided he’d rise to the bait.

“Querl,” he said suddenly. It seemed to startle Lyle, who looked away from the now open door and back at Querl.

“Hmm?” he responded, as if unsure how to take Querl’s outburst. Querl wasn’t sure how to take it himself.

“Querl Dox. That’s my name. If you’d rather call me that, you may,” Querl said, looking down at the kitten who was still burrowed into his arm.

“Oh!” Lyle said, “in that case, welcome to my home, Querl.”

His name felt weird being said by someone else, since he wasn’t particularly used to any of his teammates referring to him by that name. Rather than respond to that he simply ducked into the house. Lyle entered after him and he followed him back to a sitting room that was thoroughly covered in cat fur. Towels laid over in a pile on the side of the room, most likely for the cat to use as a bed with a food and drink bowl right next to it. Upon seeing the bowl the kitten’s claws loosened from Querl’s shirt and she wobbled over to the bowl. She set upon the bowl hungrily.

Querl stood there awkwardly for a moment, not sure what to do. This had suddenly become out of his expertise - he should have sent Saturn Girl on this job, if he’d realized it would involve interacting with someone like this. Lyle plopped down on the couch and motioned to the spot next to him. “You can sit down, you know? Unless you have pressing Legion business, in which case don’t let me keep you.”

Querl was tempted to lie and leave the situation, but there was something about Lyle - and he always liked a challenge. Perhaps putting himself outside of his comfort zone would be a good experience for him.

“Not currently,” Querl responded, sitting down next to Lyle on the couch. At first he was worried that the room would only be filled with the sounds of the kitten eating, but he was certainly wrong. Lyle started asking him about his experiments and while at first Querl had tried keeping the explanations as simple as he could, he quickly realized that Lyle was a bit more than the average human, intelligence wise. While he wasn’t on the same level as Querl, he could certainly hold his own and follow what Querl was saying, which was more that he could say about most legionnaires.

“You know, I can turn invisible,” Lyle told him after he’d been there for a while, the kitten already finished eating by then and had settled herself in between the two of them.  
“Oh, can you?” Querl asked, “that’s not typical for those from Earth.”

“It shouldn’t be. I’m the one who made the serum that gave me the abilities,” Lyle said, and Querl could sense the tell tale signs of bragging from him.  
“Let’s see it, then,” Querl responded, and Lyle smirked at him before disappearing from view. The kitten didn’t even react, which likely spoke to the fact that she was already used to his invisibility by now.

“Can you be seen by cameras? Sensed?” Querl asked.

“Nope,” Lyle’s voice came out of the air where Querl knew him to still be sitting, “but I can be smelled, and if someone were to bump into me or throw something on me, I’d be caught.”

“Not totally impenetrable,” Querl responded as Lyle flickered back into his view.

“No, not impenetrable,” Lyle said, looking at Querl curiously. Was Lyle trying to impress Querl? He should know that it wasn’t an easy task to impress the Coluan. Querl watched as Lyle’s eyes flickered over to the window.

“Whoa, it’s late. And I haven’t eaten dinner. Neither have you, I imagine,” Lyle commented. Querl’s didn’t need to check the light outside - he’d been aware of how late it was. He wasn’t hungry, since he’d eaten before leaving HQ and wasn’t used to eating much on a regular basis, but Lyle was probably hungry. That was probably a good reason to leave Lyle alone by now. Querl had monopolized his time for most of the afternoon and a good portion of the evening now.

“Well, I should le-”

“Would you like to go get something to eat?” Lyle interrupted him as he attempted to excuse himself. Querl looked back at him quickly.

“I’ve already monopolized much of your time today, do you really want to…” Querl started, not sure what he should say. He found himself not wanting to disappoint Lyle, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do in this situation. He didn’t frequently find himself caring what other people thought of what he did - or have people who actually wanted to spend time with him.

Lyle approached him, saying “it’s no big deal, no! Otherwise I would have spent all my time trying to entertain myself and your conversation was much better than that!”

“I’m not hungry,” Querl said anyway, “but I might accompany you if you wanted to get some food for yourself.”

“Only if you want to!” Lyle said to him, waving his hands in front of him.

Querl was silent for a moment before responding, “I have no reason not to.”

Lyle raised an eyebrow at Querl, then asked, “but do you want to?”

Querl almost found himself laughing at Lyle’s persistence. “Okay, fine. Yes, I want to go.”

“Better,” Lyle responded with a smirk, “now I feel a little bit less like I’m forcing you to come with me.” Lyle led Querl out of his house and into the street, heading resolutely in a specific direction.

Querl just looked at him, and Lyle started laughing at him.

“I pity your teammates, you know. How do they handle you?” Lyle asked him, walking close to Querl, who felt the other’s arm brush up against his. There was plenty of room to walk without touching each other, but Querl, for once, felt no reason to point his out. Querl almost felt offended by Lyle’s implication.

“They don’t,” Querl answered truthfully.

“Hmm.”

“So I take it that you don’t think you could either?” Querl asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

“Oh no, on the contrary, I think that I could deal with you,” Lyle said confidently, “Obviously, or else I wouldn’t have asked you to come eat with me.”

“Working with me is different than just talking to me,” Querl pointed out.

“Yeah, it would be. I feel like it would be interesting, myself, though I can’t say for sure now since I don’t have enough evidence to prove my hypothesis,” Lyle responded, and Querl felt Lyle’s arm bump against his own. Querl wasn’t sure how to feel about this sudden awareness of everything that the other boy was doing. He found himself not really minding it, though.

There was a comfortable silence between them then until they got to the place Lyle had lead them to, an informal place that had a quick ordering system and allowed them to both be seated quickly, Lyle chewing on the sandwich he had gotten.

They were both silent, since Lyle had been pushing the conversation for most of the time and now he was eating. Querl should probably try to talk some, but he was more comfortable letting them sit in silence. Lyle was finished eating soon, anyway, and with him finishing the two found themselves back into easy conversation.

“Querl, I have a question,” Lyle said, leaning forward in seat, seeming a strange combination of confident and nervous at the same time. This only heightened Querl’s interest in what he was about to say.

“Hmm. Yes?”

“Alright, so tell me. I’m just curious here, y’know. Is it typical for Coluans to go on dates?” Lyle asked, trying his hardest for a casual tone of voice. If Querl had been eating, he might have choked. As it was, he simply found his eyebrows raising.

“I don’t quite see the connection of this question to the rest of the conversation. But I suppose, no, it’s not common, though I imagine it has happened before. Especially if the Coluans are off world.”

“So does that mean that you would or wouldn’t be adverse to dating, since you are off word?” Lyle asked.

Querl didn’t respond immediately, because he wasn’t really sure how to answer the question. Any other day, he would have responded with a quick answer - he’d rather not, didn’t see it happening, and so on. But now he realized that he wouldn’t be completely adverse to the idea, depending on the person. He didn’t really consider himself dating material, though, so he couldn’t really see anyone asking him on a date - even if he found himself wishing that this was a date.

“...It would depend on the person, but I’m not completely against the idea,” Querl responded, looking Lyle right in the eyes, “but I can’t see what that has to do with anything that we’ve talked about tonight.”

“What would you like to do, if this hypothetical person were to ask you?”

“Lyle?”

“Just a question, you know.”

Querl sighed. “Fine. I haven’t ever thought about it, so I can’t say for sure. Going to dinner seems to be a typical date idea, though, so possibly that.”

“Hey, Querl, how would you feel about going out to eat this weekend?” Lyle asked smoothly, sitting back in his seat a little. Querl eyed him for a moment.

“Is this a joke?” Querl asked, and Lyle looked a bit distressed at his question.

“Not at all! I’m being completely serious here,” Lyle responded quickly.

“You are seriously asking me on a date?” Querl asked, trying his best to hide both his surprise and the hope that he felt bubbling up.

“Completely seriously,” Lyle responded.

Querl looked him over, trying to make sure that he really was telling the truth and not just trying to pull some sick joke on Querl.

“I would enjoy that,” Querl eventually responded. Lyle looked at least mildly surprised.

“Wait, really? I’m that hypothetical person?”

“Possibly,” Querl responded cryptically. Lyle’s face grew into a huge grin.

“That’s - that’s great!” Lyle responded, “So wait, was this a date?”

“Do you want it to be?” Querl responded.

“Yeah, kinda,” Lyle said, rubbing his head embarrassedly.

“Then I guess we just went on a date without realizing it,” Querl said, smiling slightly.

They were both making their way out of the shop, and Querl found that Lyle was moving them towards Legion HQ, likely to drop Querl off. He felt like it should be the other way around, but he didn’t push it.

They fell into semi comfortable, semi awkward silence on the way back, and when Querl was standing just outside the entrance to the HQ he couldn’t quite figure out what to say to Lyle. They had only known each other for that day, but they were already on a first name basis and planning on going on a date, which was definitely not what Querl had set out to do on his trip earlier.

“How much would I be pushing it if I were to kiss you now?” Lyle asked, bringing him out of his thoughts and back into what was going on in front of him.

“Hmm,” Querl responded, trying not to bite his lip, “maybe if you were to do it, you’d find out.”

“Is that permission?” Lyle asked him, stepping forward.

“Yes,” Querl responded, and then Lyle was leaning forward and his mouth was on Querl’s and - wow, that’s not - he wasn’t used to being unable to think clearly. And that’s definitely what this was doing to him, as he let out a noise that might have been a moan, or possibly a squeak, he wasn’t really sure right now. The thought came that maybe he should do something, so he pushed back into a kiss a bit, resting his hands on Lyle’s sides. Lyle’s arms were wrapped around Querl’s neck and it was taking more of his brain to make sure he stayed upright.

The kiss ended after what seemed like both forever and no time at all, Lyle pulling away a bit to breathe, his arms still wrapped around Querl’s neck.

“Was that okay?”

“Certainly,” Querl responded, and he could see Lyle smile back at him through the dark. He then pulled away from Querl.

“I should go now, probably. As much as I’m okay with not doing that, I probably should,” Lyle said sheepishly. Querl knew he was smiling right now and it probably looked weird on his face but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Good night, Querl.”

“Good night, Lyle,” he responded as Lyle made his way back to his house. He stood there for a second longer before stepping lightly into the HQ.

“Brainy, was that -” Lightning Lad started to ask something pointed about what had just happened in front of the HQ, where apparently multiple legionnaires had gathered upon finding him bring someone back to the HQ.

“Don’t start.”

“So we don’t even get to meet h-”

“I said. Don’t start.”


End file.
